In Spain, drinkers as young as 12 are joining an outdoor bender

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SPAIN is going on a bender tonight. But if you are not a teenager, you aren’t invited.

More than half a million youths are expected to take part in the country’s biggest botellón, a national drinking binge, as cities from Málaga to Madrid and Barcelona to Bilbao try to outdo one another by staging the largest gathering.

Word has spread by e-mail and text messages, and under-age drinkers are expected to crowd into city centres armed with bottles of Coca-Cola or other mixers generously spiked with alcohol for this mass outdoor “macro-botellón”.